Audio Transcript

Published: 9 Sept 2017
APA 7 Citation: Newsome, B. (Host). (2017, September 9). The impact of the National Youth Science Forum [Audio podcast transcript]. Fizzics Education. https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/podcast/fizzicsed/the-impact-of-the-national-youth-science-forum/

Ben Newsome CF is the recipient of the 2023 UTS Chancellor’s Award for Excellence and a Churchill Fellow. He is a global leader in science communication and the founder of Fizzics Education.

[00:00:00]
Stephanie Terwindt: The way they run the programme, the first week is all about science and then the second week is really around building the confidence of the students to become much better communicators and to present themselves well and to give them some other skills that are going to give them a competitive edge.

[00:00:17]
Stephanie Terwindt: So they actually get you to develop a mock CV. So you do up a resume for yourself in 10 years’ time. So me thinking I was going to be an astrophysicist, it had that I’d studied my bachelor’s at UWA and got an honours and then done a master’s and then done a PhD at ANU and so on and so forth.

[00:00:37]
Stephanie Terwindt: And they get you to apply for a fake job. So I went on the NASA website and found a job there and did up a cover letter and sent it with my resume. And they get in ex-students from the NYSF as well as Rotarians as well as a few other people, professionals at the university, to sit and interview you for your fake job.

[00:00:57]
Stephanie Terwindt: And it’s such a valuable experience just in terms of learning how to write a CV, but also in terms of doing an interview and being able to get immediate feedback about it. I actually volunteered doing that for the years that it was running in Perth, and it was such a great experience.

[00:01:53]
Ben Newsome: Since 1984, more than 11,000 Australian students have been involved in the National Youth Science Forum, a not-for-profit organisation that’s been running residential programmes for kids who really want to get involved in science. This week, we speak with two of their alumni.

[00:02:13]
Announcer: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. For hundreds of ideas, free experiments and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. And now, here’s your host, Ben Newsome.

[00:02:33]
Ben Newsome: Yes, welcome to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. This week we are looking at the National Youth Science Forum. This is a group that’s been working very, very hard for year 12 students across the country since 1984 with their residential STEM programmes. Now first up is Dr Tim Smith, who’s working with Swinburne University to create a new tertiary course around engineering and innovation. Let’s take a listen.

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Ben Newsome: Tim Smith, welcome to the Fizzics Ed Podcast.

[00:03:08]
Dr Timothy Smith: Thanks very much, Ben.

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Ben Newsome: Thanks very much for jumping on board, especially the week after National Science Week. I hear it was quite busy for you as well.

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Dr Timothy Smith: Yeah, that’s right. It’s always a busy time of year when you work in the university sector. It comes right around the start of semester two, so things are crazy enough already and then you dump Science Week on top of it. It gets pretty fun.

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Ben Newsome: Yeah, you’ve got research to write, you’ve got grants to get, you’ve got students to look after.

[00:03:40]
Dr Timothy Smith: That’s right, yeah.

[00:03:42]
Ben Newsome: Oh yeah, I know the feeling. And as we were saying just prior to this recording, we were flat out last week. We did 140 shows across Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, and Canberra. I think Science Week is really Science Month as far as I’m concerned.

[00:03:56]
Dr Timothy Smith: As it should be.

[00:03:57]
Ben Newsome: Exactly right. Hey, thanks for jumping on board with the podcast. Look, the reason we’ve met, in case listeners are wondering, Tim has been referred to us from the National Youth Science Forum. Some people may not know what NYSF is all about, but Tim certainly does know. Tim, how’d you get involved with NYSF?

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Dr Timothy Smith: Well, for those that don’t know, the NYSF is a two-week residential programme to introduce students starting year 12, so it’s run in January, to what life working as a scientist or an engineer would be like. I got introduced to the NYSF through my high school physics teacher, actually.

[00:04:40]
Dr Timothy Smith: When I was in year 11, he tapped me on the shoulder and he said, “This is something that I think would be really good for you. You should consider applying.” At the time, I didn’t think like it would be something that I would enjoy to be perfectly honest, but I put in an application anyway and was lucky enough to be accepted and then went on and had some of the best weeks of my life.

[00:05:00]
Ben Newsome: It’s funny how mentors do that. They throw you in the deep end and say good luck with that, and you’re going, I don’t even know if this is for me. That’s awesome. So you applied, not quite sure if you want to do it, and then it became like one of the best things that you’d ever did. Why? Why was it like one of the best fortnights you ever had?

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Dr Timothy Smith: For a couple of reasons, actually. I think if you’d asked me why I would have said that straight afterwards, I would have said it’s the people that you meet, spending two weeks with like-minded students from all around Australia. You form some lasting friendships there, so there’s that huge social aspect.

[00:05:43]
Dr Timothy Smith: But reflecting on it now, 15 years later—I’m showing my age—it really set me up for deciding what it was that I wanted to do as a university course and then throughout the rest of my career. It really shaped my career progression from that point.

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Ben Newsome: Wow, so 15 years down the track, you can look back and go as a year 11 student you apply, you go to this thing in the summer break, and in two weeks you are able to work out what you did love and what you don’t love. That’s awesome.

[00:06:20]
Dr Timothy Smith: Yeah, it was a fantastic opportunity to be exposed to so many different scientific disciplines and get some real hands-on experiences as to what working as a scientist is actually like. I don’t think that’s definitely not taught in high schools, not that you can really teach that, but it’s not an opportunity that most people get.

[00:06:44]
Dr Timothy Smith: So it was a fantastic opportunity to really understand what I could be doing with the rest of my life.

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Ben Newsome: Well, I really want to find out a bit more about this because I’ve run into the National Youth Science Forum through an accelerator through PWC. I was at an alumni event a couple months ago and hearing about what happens to people after the fact was awesome. But trying to get a picture of just how that two-week period—it sounds fairly full-on by the sound of it. What organisations did you visit? What did you get to do?

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Dr Timothy Smith: Oh, well, I will preface everything I’m about to say with this was 15 years ago, so no doubt the programme’s changed a little bit since my time there. But when I went through the NYSF, I was in Session A. There were two, two-week sessions that were run at that time. I think there’s three now, which just goes to show how popular this has got.

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Dr Timothy Smith: Within that session, there were about 150 other students there and you were split up into groups based on what you thought you might want to do in the future. There was actually an exercise once you got accepted, they asked you to actually find a job in the local paper that was being advertised that you thought you might want.

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Ben Newsome: Do you remember what you wanted at the time?

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Dr Timothy Smith: I actually wanted to be a doctor at that point in time. They did say that it had to be in science or engineering, it couldn’t be in medicine. So I found something that was in the biomedical field. I can’t remember exactly what the job was. Off the back of that, I got put into the group called Darwin, obviously named after Charles Darwin.

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Dr Timothy Smith: So all the places that we got to visit in the two weeks were around biology and biomedical science. We went to the entomology lab at ANU to look at a whole bunch of different insects. We went to their electron microscopy facilities. There was a guy from the Australian Federal Police that came to talk to us about forensics.

[00:08:55]
Dr Timothy Smith: A whole host of different experiences. I was lucky enough to go back to the NYSF for two years after my time there as a student as a staff member, so I got to know a little bit about how the programme is actually set up and run. I know that they put a lot of time and effort into curating these experiences to make them not only as relevant to the students but also as diverse as possible.

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Ben Newsome: Absolutely. And they’ve pulled in a bunch of experts all together in a couple-week period. That’s got to be difficult to handle with everyone’s timetables and schedules being what they are.

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Dr Timothy Smith: It’s a huge logistics feat. But when you’re there as a student, it just doesn’t feel like that. It feels like the whole thing is just seamless and runs like clockwork. It’s amazing what they do.

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Ben Newsome: Well, rolling forward, I mean, you did say that this was 15 years for you and obviously you’ve had somewhat of a career now. You’re a molecular biologist, yeah?

[00:09:54]
Dr Timothy Smith: That is my formal training, but I don’t actually work in that field anymore.

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Ben Newsome: Oh, what do you do now?

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Dr Timothy Smith: I’m currently the operations manager for the Engineering Practice Academy at Swinburne University in Melbourne. This is a new venture for Swinburne; it’s taking its first students next year in 2018. It’s an undergraduate four-year honours level engineering degree.

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Dr Timothy Smith: But our unique selling point is that in our degree, you will not attend a single lecture, you will not sit a single exam. All of your teaching and learning will be done by doing real industry projects for real clients from day one of the degree right through to the end of your fourth year.

[00:10:48]
Ben Newsome: Why do I have a feeling you’re going to be oversubscribed with that?

[00:10:54]
Dr Timothy Smith: As I said when I applied for this job, if this had been available when I was going into undergrad, I probably would have studied engineering. It sounds like a fantastic way to spend four years and come out at the end of it with a qualification.

[00:11:09]
Ben Newsome: So you’ve had a good hand in what that syllabus is going to be like by the sound of it.

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Dr Timothy Smith: Yeah. I mean, I’m not an engineer by trade, I am a molecular biologist, but my role is more on the delivery side. We’ve got quite a good academic staff here that have put together the actual curriculum and it’s just my job to help them deliver that in this sort of unique way. But we’re a very collaborative team, so everyone pitches in where they can.

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Ben Newsome: Wow, how many places are going to go for that? How many are they going to open up for that first year?

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Dr Timothy Smith: Look, the first year intake is going to be quite small. I don’t think we’ve settled on a number yet, but we’re constrained a little bit by physical space at the moment and also a few other factors. But this is something that the university is committed to and so we’ll scale quite quickly after its first initial intake.

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Dr Timothy Smith: If we have our way, the university will be accepting the same number of students into this course as they do into the traditional engineering degree within about five years.

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Ben Newsome: I bet. And I was just thinking about contrasting that against what NYSF does, because it’s got a very clear alumni. I’d imagine that you’d be able to create from the start-up an interesting alumni group as they go through their degree and move on to their careers. It’d be interesting where people go.

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Dr Timothy Smith: Yeah, absolutely. That’s exactly right.

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Ben Newsome: It’s awesome. So I guess thinking about this, what made you jump into science in the first place? Year 11, your teacher picks you out going, “You know what, this might be for you,” but I’m guessing science for you surely didn’t start in year 11 in your head, or maybe it did, I don’t know.

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Dr Timothy Smith: No, I mean, it was always, I’ve always been STEM inclined, I guess you could say. I can remember right back when I was very, very young, taking apart my alarm clock just to see how it worked and stuff like that, and then not being able to put it back together and getting into lots of trouble from my parents.

[00:13:29]
Ben Newsome: That there is actually a fantastic thing. And by the way, listeners, if you do pull apart machines and put them back together, just make sure they’re not anything to do with capacitors or anything that can store charge in like TVs and things. But I must say, I have clear memories of doing exactly that with screwdrivers and spanners, pulling apart old—this is showing my age—but old VCR recorders, old video recorders and things and fax machines. The key was once you pull it apart, we had to swap groups then try and put the thing back together that the other group pulled apart, which is nasty but made you have to think.

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Dr Timothy Smith: Yeah, absolutely. So doing that kind of stuff, looking back on it, it definitely shows that I’ve always had some sort of interest in STEM. Then I was lucky enough through my primary and high school education to have access to some fantastic science teachers who sort of cultivated that innate curiosity about the world and how it works and ultimately directing me towards applying for the NYSF, which kind of showed me exactly what working as a scientist can actually be like.

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Ben Newsome: This has been a recurring theme with all of our guests that have all said at some point in time, someone sparked the curiosity and grew them and grew them, and it went from there. And it actually makes me think about the schools, your feeder schools that come into NYSF, then those students that then leave NYSF to enter university to eventually come across, for example, your course. What sort of advice have you got to wave a magic wand and say, this is what I would love the curriculum or whatever to look like from primary to high school so that my students who arrive in a tertiary sector kind of know how STEM actually works?

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Dr Timothy Smith: That’s a really good question. I guess from my perspective, especially in the last say five years, there’s been quite a heavy emphasis on STEM education, particularly in the high school sector. You can’t really pick up a newspaper these days without seeing some report about how STEM jobs will be the jobs of the future and that everyone working in any discipline will need to have some level of STEM literacy.

[00:16:16]
Dr Timothy Smith: I think that’s probably very true, but in order for that to actually happen, we’re going to need to do a lot better job of thinking about what it is we’re actually teaching in high school. I can remember first year chemistry, my lecturer stood up and said, “Everything that you’ve learnt about molecules in high school is wrong. I’m going to reteach it to you in this first week.”

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Dr Timothy Smith: Because in high school chemistry—and again, maybe things are different now. This is going back 15 years. But we learned about electrons having discrete orbitals and they move through them when you add energy and when they come down that’s when you get luminescence and that kind of stuff. Which is true to a certain extent, but it’s not actually how things work in the real world. I mean, it’s much more complicated and messy than that.

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Dr Timothy Smith: Which is true to a certain extent, but it’s not actually how things work in the real world. I mean, it’s much more complicated and messy than that.

[00:17:20]
Ben Newsome: Very fuzzy.

[00:17:22]
Dr Timothy Smith: Yeah, and I can understand the desire to simplify things for students in high school. They only need to know so much. But at the same time, what is the point of teaching people something that’s not necessarily true just for the sake of teaching them that? Like if we can’t come up with a way of teaching 16-year-olds how electrons actually work, why are we teaching them this sort of half-truth about it?

[00:17:50]
Ben Newsome: Well, this is a good conversation I had with some awesome primary STEM educators. They take gifted and talented classes together in years five and six and they’re from a number of schools and they accelerate them in STEM understanding. And nearly everyone to a tee just says, just change your language but be true to the science. And it seems to me that you’re pretty much the same way.

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Dr Timothy Smith: Absolutely, absolutely. And the other thing that I would stress about STEM education is teaching students what they need to know in order to operate effectively in society at the moment. So part of this course that we’re developing here at Swinburne, we’re very concerned about teaching students engineering that is relevant to what we call 21st century engineering practice as opposed to 20th century engineering practice.

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Dr Timothy Smith: So there’s a lot of stuff now that all universities around Australia teach engineering students because that’s what you’ve always taught engineering students. But if you go out into the real world and into the workforce and you ask any practicing engineer, when was the last time you solved a triple integral by hand? They would say, probably the first year of my engineering degree. Because we’re teaching them how to do really complicated calculus just for the sake of, that’s what our lecturers learned when they were in engineering, so they need to know it.

[00:19:28]
Dr Timothy Smith: And yes, students need to know calculus fundamentals and how to actually do those calculations, but using 21st century tools. So there are things called calculators these days that, if I was a practicing engineer and I had to solve that equation and I pulled out a pen and paper, I’d get fired because I’m wasting the time of my employer and their money, because I’m doing work that could easily be done in half a second using modern tools.

[00:20:01]
Ben Newsome: So if you had a bunch of year 12s in front of you and you had to describe the working life of a scientist in a university or out in industry, and you only had a couple minutes to describe it, what would you say that it’s really like to work as a scientist? What are the sort of tasks you actually do on a day-to-day basis?

[00:20:18]
Dr Timothy Smith: Working as a scientist, or even an engineer, it’s problem solving. That’s what you’re doing. You’re thinking about the world and how it works and trying to come up with either a theory as to why it works that way, or a way of making it work in a different way or a way that is more aligned with what you need it to do.

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Dr Timothy Smith: There’s this sort of perception that STEM jobs are all about maths and you have to be really smart to do them. That’s not true. I mean, there is a level of maths and there is definitely a way of thinking that you need to be able to perform to be successful in a STEM career, but it’s not only the brightest people in the world are successful scientists and engineers. It’s just people that have mastered a particular skill, which is logical thinking, and that’s something that anyone can do with a little bit of practice.

[00:21:26]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, it actually reminds me of that quote I think Albert Einstein says, like, I have no special talent, I am only passionately curious. Which, I hope it was attributed to him, lots of people just throw quotes on his face these days and go, he really said this, but at least it resounds a lot with what you’re saying.

[00:21:43]
Dr Timothy Smith: Absolutely, yeah.

[00:21:45]
Ben Newsome: So if you had to give some advice to a high school admin team, to a science team that really wants to accelerate their students, and obviously going to something like the National Youth Science Forum or whatever, but broadly as a whole, what would you suggest to them so they could look after their kids?

[00:22:03]
Dr Timothy Smith: Teach them how to think, not what to think. So the danger—and I was a tutor at university helping students get through first and second year biology subjects, so I speak from a little bit of experience—there is a tendency in STEM subjects because there is an element of rote learning, like you just need to know certain things, there is a tendency to just fall back on that and just teach what it is that students need to know.

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Dr Timothy Smith: But that’s not preparing students for work in STEM fields. So teach them how to think about things, teach them how to find the answers that they need, and worry less about teaching them the rote stuff.

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Dr Timothy Smith: So an example I always like to draw on is in my second year biochemistry class at university, we had to learn how to draw all the molecules involved in the citric acid cycle. Now that’s patently ridiculous because you can look that up on the internet in 30 seconds if you really needed to know what they look like.

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Ben Newsome: I had to do it too.

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Dr Timothy Smith: Yeah. Understanding the citric acid cycle and how it works, that’s important. Understanding…

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Ben Newsome: Good old Krebs.

[00:23:20]
Dr Timothy Smith: That’s right. Understanding how you would find the information you need if you needed to dig deeper into it, and understanding how that cycle impacts everything else that goes on within the workings of a cell. But actually having to draw out every single molecule is, I don’t want to say this because my lecturer was a really nice guy, but it’s just lazy teaching. Because it’s a very easy exam question to write and to mark, but it doesn’t actually teach students anything.

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Ben Newsome: Yeah, I think they call it busy work. Just get them busy. They look busy, they must be learning.

[00:24:03]
Dr Timothy Smith: Exactly.

[00:24:04]
Ben Newsome: Mind you, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find modern teachers thinking about that rote learning, which is good news. I mean, I think education very much is something that people get pulled left, right and center, but the core group of teachers around get that no one should be doing it that way anymore, which is really good news to see.

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Dr Timothy Smith: Well, that is good to hear. But I guess the problem is that if you’re really serious about educating, it’s about educating individuals rather than groups. And it’s always difficult to keep that in the top of your mind and it’s very easy to fall back into, well I taught it this way last year and it seemed to work so I’ll do it again this way. That’s a slippery slope to start going down.

[00:24:52]
Ben Newsome: And the good thing is you’re now in charge effectively of putting in a tertiary curriculum where you could do what you want, you must be loving it.

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Dr Timothy Smith: Yes, well our curriculum is very, very different and to a certain extent will be guided a lot by the types of projects that groups and industry come to us and say, can you put a student team on to solve this? So we are guaranteed to be teaching things that are relevant to at the very least current engineering practice, but definitely pushing the boundaries into what students will need to know when they go out into the workforce in five years.

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Ben Newsome: I think what you and the Swinburne team are really putting together is brilliant because this project-based learning idea is a big thing nowadays in schools, and you’re really emulating going, you know what guys, it wasn’t just because your teachers told you to do it, this is how industry works too funnily enough. That’s really good, I love it. That’s awesome.

[00:25:48]
Ben Newsome: Well thanks very much Tim Smith for popping onto the podcast, and look, I know it’s been flat out with your National Science Week hurrah, because you’ve got to get back to students and research and everything else. What’s coming up in the cards for the next couple weeks for you?

[00:26:01]
Dr Timothy Smith: So we’ve just started looking at admissions for next year’s intake actually. So year 12 students that are applying through VTAC have been able to preference our course for the last two weeks, so we’re starting to see some of those trickle in now. If students these days are anything like I was back 15 years ago, university courses probably aren’t the top of your mind in August, you’re still worrying about your upcoming exams. But we’re starting to see some of the really keen students apply now, which is great.

[00:26:35]
Dr Timothy Smith: And just to kind of plug our course a little bit more, we don’t look at a student’s ATAR. So it’s a non-ATAR course, it’s all done by interview. So if you apply or preference our course, we can actually give you a provisional offer prior to going into your exams, which will give lots of students peace of mind.

[00:26:54]
Ben Newsome: Cool, and what we’ll do is we’ll throw a link to that in the show notes and make sure people can get in touch. And actually how can people get in touch with yourself through Swinburne?

[00:27:01]
Dr Timothy Smith: Yeah, you can email me at Swinburne, so it’s [email protected], or you can find me on Twitter at @Tim_D_Smith.

[00:27:11]
Ben Newsome: Fantastic, well thanks very much Tim. I know it’s been a long road since you went through NYSF, but certainly I can see that that two weeks really changed your perspective on how things work in the scientific community and hey, now you’re driving students to do the same.

[00:27:28]
Dr Timothy Smith: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:27:30]
Ben Newsome: Much appreciated. Have a top afternoon.

[00:27:32]
Dr Timothy Smith: You too Ben, thanks very much.

[00:27:34]
Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed podcast. We’re all about science, ed tech and more. To see 100 fun free experiments you can do with your class, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F-I-Z-Z-I-C-S and click 100 free experiments.

[00:27:52]
Announcer: Our next alumni from the National Youth Science Forum is Stephanie Terwindt. She worked at BHP as a geologist originally within the iron ore division, and now she works in business improvement since early 2015. I’ll tell you what, she had an interesting take on what NYSF does when it comes to getting kids prepared for their careers.

[00:28:10]
Ben Newsome: Stephanie Terwindt, thank you very much for joining on the Fizzics Ed podcast.

[00:28:13]
Stephanie Terwindt: Woo! Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[00:28:15]
Ben Newsome: And especially while you’re on holidays. Whereabouts are you?

[00:28:18]
Stephanie Terwindt: So I’m currently in a small town called Driebergen in Holland in the Netherlands and I’m travelling around the country visiting all the family on my dad’s side.

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Ben Newsome: Now you said that really easily. I’ve been practicing.

[00:28:30]
Stephanie Terwindt: I’ve been practicing.

[00:28:34]
Ben Newsome: Thank you very much. So just full disclosure for the listeners, it’s a quarter past 4 in the afternoon in Sydney and it’s a quarter past 8 in the morning right now for you?

[00:28:42]
Stephanie Terwindt: Yes. Today.

[00:28:45]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, my brain. Sorry, I do a lot of conferencing to people all over the place. I’m used to talking to the US where I do have to do the backwards change on the dateline. But of course you’re in Europe right now.

[00:28:54]
Stephanie Terwindt: Starts to break your brain, doesn’t it?

[00:28:56]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, it starts to break your brain, especially when we allow for how people write dates differently as well. We put day, month and year. US put month, day and year, but not every country do that. Does it?

[00:29:03]
Stephanie Terwindt: No, especially the US they seem to be a bit funny about a lot of things like that.

[00:29:08]
Ben Newsome: Hello all US listeners there, I hope you’re having a great afternoon.

[00:29:11]
Stephanie Terwindt: Hello! We love you.

[00:29:12]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, we do. Actually I got a lot of good friends over there. But hey, look, thanks for joining in. Now, the reason we definitely wanted to get in touch with you is I bumped into some friends from the National Youth Science Forum, and they said, look, you’ve got to speak with Stephanie, she’s got a great story, and so this is why we’re here.

[00:29:30]
Stephanie Terwindt: Oh, well, I’m glad that someone thinks I’m interesting.

[00:29:32]
Ben Newsome: Gosh, nothing like being set up like that, hey?

[00:29:35]
Stephanie Terwindt: Yeah, right.

[00:29:38]
Ben Newsome: No worries. Well, look, seriously, it’s really interesting for teachers to find out why we’re doing this. In terms of throwing kids to a two-week event with NYSF is one thing, but actually hearing about the impact of that event and where they go afterwards is to me interesting. And I know that teachers have often asked us, what are the impacts of these sort of things? And that’s why we’re doing this. So, when did you do the NYSF time?

[00:30:06]
Stephanie Terwindt: I went to the NYSF in 2006, right at the beginning of my final year, year 12 in school.

[00:30:13]
Ben Newsome: Got it, got it, got it. How did you find out about it?

[00:30:16]
Stephanie Terwindt: I’ve been trying to remember this and I think it was actually a poster that had been put up in the science department of my high school. And it was just a pretty simple poster near the chemistry lab and I was, let’s call my younger self a go-getting nerd, so anything that was sciencey and involved going to a university to learn more about science I was really keen to do. I’d done a few similar shorter programs in Perth, and this national program just sounded like the best thing ever, so I pretty rapidly got onto researching it and figuring out how I could attend.

[00:30:54]
Ben Newsome: Oh, it’s good news that you’re actually in a safe place when it comes to geeks and nerds, so we’re okay with that on that end.

[00:31:00]
Stephanie Terwindt: Excellent.

[00:31:01]
Ben Newsome: But actually it’s kind of interesting that you actually read the posters. The number of kids that go past all this information that gets put out by teachers is amazing.

[00:31:08]
Stephanie Terwindt: Yeah, I don’t even know why I was in that space because I kind of have this memory of looking at the poster and it wasn’t before or after a class when I would have just been walking past it. I think I’d gone back for something that I left in the lab or for some reason I was down that end of the corridor on my own and kind of taking my time and I saw this poster and thought, oh, that looks cool.

[00:31:30]
Ben Newsome: You had a bit of a sliding doors moment.

[00:31:32]
Stephanie Terwindt: Yeah, so it was meant to be maybe.

[00:31:35]
Ben Newsome: Oh, awesome. So what was the time like? So you’re in Perth. Did you have to fly across to Canberra or where did you end up doing this?

[00:31:43]
Stephanie Terwindt: Yeah, so it was in Canberra. This was before they started doing the two NYSF sessions on either side of the country. I think they started that a few years after I attended. So everyone was flying into Canberra.

[00:31:56]
Ben Newsome: Right, right, right. So you joined it because you, so… Wait, what was the selection process like? Because full disclosure, I’ve never been through the NYSF program. So what do you actually have to do?

[00:32:08]
Stephanie Terwindt: Well, it’s fully sponsored by Rotary. So you actually go through the selection process with your local Rotary district. So in the case of WA, I think there’s only two Rotary districts and one is kind of halfway through Perth and north through the rest of the state and the other one is south. So you’re kind of competing against half your state to get a spot. And each Rotary district sends a couple kids or maybe five kids depending on how much budget they have for it.

[00:32:38]
Stephanie Terwindt: So originally you just send in an application letter and a form. Well, this is what it was like when I did it. I assume now you apply online or do something like that. But we had to send in a letter and a form. And then if you moved through to the next phase you do like a group assessment sort of thing. So you all go to this center and you do some group activities and it’s almost like a group interview. And then the final stage is an interview with a panel of people from the Rotary district and from NYSF.

[00:33:04]
Ben Newsome: So it’s fairly gruelling.

[00:33:06]
Stephanie Terwindt: It’s pretty full-on. I remember being very nervous in my interview with the panel. They ask you all sorts of questions about science current events. So we were talking about climate change and all these things. And so before you go in you have to research all these topics that are outside of your field of interest. And yeah, it was very full-on.

[00:33:33]
Ben Newsome: And daunting. I mean, like 16 or 17 years old and now you’re in front of these people who really know what they’re talking about.

[00:33:40]
Stephanie Terwindt: Exactly.

[00:33:42]
Ben Newsome: That’s not unlike out in business, I suppose.

[00:33:44]
Stephanie Terwindt: Oh yeah, no, it totally preps you for the real world in that sense. And at least sounding like you know what you’re talking about, even if you don’t.

[00:33:54]
Ben Newsome: Well yeah, that’s part of the comms side of things, the communication side sometimes, I get that totally. That’s interesting. So that prepped you to be able to go to the camp. You had a great time going to all these different telescopes and you had a bit of a personal journey as well and what not. Have you been in contact with a couple friends out of it? Do you get called back much to speak with new potential people who are just entering the program or whatnot, or haven’t had a chance at this stage?

[00:36:14]
Ben Newsome: That’s brilliant. It seems to me that’s something high schools across the country and beyond could be doing that in any key learning area. That’s brilliant.

[00:36:24]
Stephanie Terwindt: Yeah, yeah, it was such a fantastic experience.

[00:36:27]
Ben Newsome: And you wouldn’t even have to pull in professors and all the bigwig types, you could have people from the community in any area where they’re studying hairdressing, plumbing, whatever, that is really, really valuable because I’d be struggling to find a single student that will have left high school that had much more of an interview than going to Macca’s.

[00:36:46]
Stephanie Terwindt: Yeah.

[00:36:47]
Ben Newsome: Like usually something straightforward as an interview, but sitting for a pretend interview in an area that they genuinely want to do. And if you try and extrapolate 10 years ahead you’re going for a real job, right. So that’s really… I love that idea, that’s brilliant.

[00:37:01]
Stephanie Terwindt: Yeah, I remember at the time having a lot of fun with my CV making up all these fantastic things that I would have done.

[00:37:09]
Ben Newsome: What did you say? Do you remember?

[00:37:11]
Stephanie Terwindt: Oh God, I wish I still had it, but I had a PhD in some really obscure field, some very weird thesis and I’d worked at… I can’t even remember, it was very over the top though. I would have been applying for NASA, if that had been real.

[00:37:30]
Ben Newsome: You’re applying for NASA, you can’t be something small, you’ve got to really nail it in one area.

[00:37:34]
Stephanie Terwindt: Yeah, exactly. But I think one of the other great things is, going back to what you’re saying about finding people from the community to run these interviews, that was one of the beauties of them having Rotarians running the interviews, because Rotary is really intrinsically linked with the NYSF.

[00:37:55]
Stephanie Terwindt: And you meet Rotarians and yeah, it’s a bunch of old dudes half the time, but… Hello Rotarians out there, I’m also a Rotarian. I love you all.

[00:38:05]
Ben Newsome: That’s alright, I’ve got to speak at a Rotarian function in a couple of months. They’re good people.

[00:38:09]
Stephanie Terwindt: Oh, they’re lovely, they’re fantastic. But I mean, those rooms are just impressive to be in with the breadth of experience that those people have. It’s incredible. So having some of those people who are sitting on corporate boards or they’re CEOs or they’re high-up management interviewing these kids is incredible.

[00:38:31]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, I actually would love to chat with more NYSF graduates because I must say, like just thinking about, yeah you get to see the science in action, you get to meet the scientists and think about your future and all the rest. But that one experience… I’m sorry if everyone’s harping on this a little bit, but that one experience to me is gold. Like it really is. I mean, 30 years from now, weirdly that would still be in your mind.

[00:38:56]
Stephanie Terwindt: Yeah. And like I said, those are the parts of the NYSF that I remember more than the science parts. And certainly it stands out as a highlight to me for sure.

[00:39:08]
Stephanie Terwindt: I mean, almost all of my job now is coming from skills that I learned in that second week than from what I learned in the first week doing physics.

[00:39:18]
Ben Newsome: Makes you wonder whether you could have some small collegiate schools or within a school itself where they can prep students to be able to get into NYSF or any other accelerated program and sort of emulate this same process. It seems like a great idea.

[00:39:33]
Stephanie Terwindt: Mm hmm.

[00:39:34]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, that’s cool. All right, so rolling it forward, you’re now trying to get the business of BHP to be booming even further. That must take you around the place. I mean, where has that taken you?

[00:39:47]
Stephanie Terwindt: Um, well, so mostly I travel around Australia. The way BHP is structured, we’ve kind of got our Australian division, our Americas division, and then oil and gas. So I work in the Australian division, so I’m quite often travelling to Brisbane. So I’m based in Perth and I fly to Brisbane about once a month.

[00:40:09]
Stephanie Terwindt: Also sometimes I haven’t headed out to Adelaide yet, but my team does work there. And I often actually travel to our work sites, so up into the Pilbara to the iron ore mines, out into central Queensland to the coal mines, all over the shop.

[00:40:26]
Ben Newsome: That’s interesting. I mean I’ve got a good friend of mine who worked for the Australian Wheat Board and he was touring all the grain silos around Australia and another photo, another grain silo, in the middle of anywhere. It’s interesting. So you’re in a similar situation with mines etc.

[00:40:40]
Stephanie Terwindt: Yeah. Although it’s probably similar to grain silos, they kind of all look the same really. Could be anywhere.

[00:40:48]
Ben Newsome: So it sounds to me like there’s no way you would have taken back the experience in any way.

[00:40:52]
Stephanie Terwindt: Oh no, not at all.

[00:40:54]
Ben Newsome: Ah, that’s cool. So just imagine you got to stand in front of some teachers and you were there to try and really just get their head around why would they get their students involved. I mean just that simple question. Imagine a teacher just puts their hand up, look I’m, I don’t know Stephanie, we’re pretty busy here. Why would we bother plugging this? I mean what would you have to say for someone being a little bit negative that way? But at least just asking this question straight out, what is the value?

[00:41:21]
Stephanie Terwindt: Yeah. Look, I think a lot of kids that are interested in science and love science and want to pursue it, I think even now is still somewhat reluctant to, maybe not reluctant to pursue it but to talk about it and to be proud of the fact that they love science because it is still seen as quite nerdy. And when you’re in high school that’s the last thing you want to be is calling attention to yourself for something that you can be teased about. I get that.

[00:41:52]
Stephanie Terwindt: And I think it’s especially so for young girls. And what you learn at the NYSF is how cool science is, and that’s really what it is. You’re just spending two weeks thinking, oh my god, this is so cool. But it also gives you the skills to be able to talk about science in a way that’s constructive and to share your passion for science. Which is such an important skill for any scientist or engineer to have.

[00:42:22]
Stephanie Terwindt: I see it every day at work, scientists and engineers who can’t communicate their point and they’re doing fantastic work, but they can’t tell anyone about it. So it’s such an essential skill whether you’re in industry or in academia to be able to explain and communicate your passion for science to other people. And if more kids could learn that before they get to university because they don’t teach that to you at university, then why wouldn’t you send your kids there? Why wouldn’t you want your students to be the top of their field just because they can communicate it better than the next person?

[00:43:00]
Ben Newsome: Especially when it sometimes it can be about pitching to be able to get grant funding or even get seed funding for a potential company.

[00:43:08]
Stephanie Terwindt: Yeah, exactly.

[00:43:09]
Ben Newsome: No, I totally agree. And so just imagine you had a bunch of kids who seriously love their science, they know they’re gonna be scientists. That’s totally gonna be their passion, that’s their thing. What would be the one simple take-home advice to them if they’re year 12, it’s August right now, they’re about to finish their HSC, they’re about to enter that big bad world out there. What would be your advice to them as they enter their first stages in a scientific career?

[00:43:39]
Stephanie Terwindt: I think my advice would be to be flexible. Science is a difficult career to pursue because outside of academia it can be quite hard to find work and to find work that motivates you and that you’re passionate about. So I think my advice would be to be flexible and to be open to new and interesting opportunities, even if they don’t sound like what you thought you would be doing.

[00:44:07]
Ben Newsome: Be interested in everything.

[00:44:08]
Stephanie Terwindt: Yeah. Curious about everything. That’s what a good scientist does, they’re curious. So be curious about everything and all opportunities that come your way.

[00:44:18]
Ben Newsome: Yeah I agree totally with that. And look, thank you very much Stephanie. I know you’re starting your day, you’re over in Holland right now. I mean what are you getting up to today?

[00:44:27]
Stephanie Terwindt: What am I doing today? We’re going to go visit an old friend, Francis, and spend some time with her and then probably tour around the area a bit, look at the sites to see in Driebergen, which is quite a small town, so probably won’t take us all day. But it’s very beautiful out here, so I think I’ll just be enjoying the sunshine and the scenery.

[00:44:51]
Ben Newsome: Well, the weather and the food is fantastic.

[00:44:54]
Stephanie Terwindt: Mm hmm.

[00:44:55]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, no thank you very much. I don’t want to keep you too much from that, especially when it is in the morning, is time to go get out and about and look, much appreciated and thanks for joining on the podcast.

[00:45:07]
Stephanie Terwindt: Thank you for having me.

[00:45:09]
Ben Newsome: No worries, have a great day.

[00:45:11]
Announcer: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. Why don’t you book us for a science show or workshop in your school? We love seeing students get excited about science, and you will too. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au and click on schools for more info.

[00:45:27]
Ben Newsome: And if you’re still not convinced that student enrichment programs are worth your effort, check out last week’s episode with [Organization] as I spoke with our previous guest, who’s been taking students into Huntsville, Alabama for Space Camp.

[00:45:42]
[Guest]: In my visits to Space Camp, I’ve met Charles Bolden, the NASA administrator, and had a nice conversation, not this fleeting shake your hand and nod in a photo, but actually conversations around education and STEM education and jobs of the future. So Emily is going to meet up with all different NASA astronauts, different people who have different jobs. But Emily’s announcement to be our ambassador for [Organization] was delivered by an astronaut on stage at her school. So she talks about she hasn’t done much yet, but I think shaking hands and standing on stage with an astronaut was a pretty amazing start to her ambassadorship.

[00:46:46]
Ben Newsome: This is the Fizzics Ed podcast. We’re excited about science. Grab a copy of our new book, Be Amazing: How to Teach Science the Way Primary Kids Love from our website. Just search Be Amazing book. It’s available in hard copy and ebook. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F-I-Z-Z-I-C-S.

[00:47:11]
Ben Newsome: There really are so many different ways you can get kids involved in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. And especially a number of enrichment programs around, you just gotta know where to look. So definitely check out [Organization] and certainly National Youth Science Forum. And imagine what would happen if you had the kids go through both programs? I’m sure that’d be really interesting and quite powerful if they got that chance.

[00:47:39]
Ben Newsome: Hey, next week, different episode. We’re speaking with Deb Cook and Jamie Cook from Dissection Connection and Rockhounds up in Gympie. They’re putting together a Gympie Bone Museum project and I’ll tell you what, it’s really gonna make a difference for their local town. So check out next week’s episode. It’s certainly a little bit different and well worth our time.

[00:48:01]
Ben Newsome: Anyway, that brings us to an end of yet another Fizzics Ed podcast. My name is Ben Newsome and I really hope you keep on working hard to make science sing in your community and in your school. All the best. Bye for now.

[00:48:16]
Announcer: You’ve been listening to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re excited about science. Subscribe to us on iTunes to download the next episode as soon as it’s released. And don’t forget, for hundreds of ideas, free experiments, our new Be Amazing book and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F I Z Z I C S.

Frequently Asked Questions

Extra thought ideas to consider

The “Unlearning” Gap in Science Education
Dr Tim Smith highlighted a common frustration where university lecturers must “undo” oversimplified concepts taught in high school (such as the discrete orbitals of electrons). Educators might consider how to teach foundational concepts in a way that remains “true to the science” without being overwhelming, reducing the need for students to unlearn “half-truths” when they reach the tertiary level.

The Value of Mock Professionalism
The mock CV exercise described by Stephanie Terwindt—where students write a resume for their “future self” ten years down the line—is a powerful tool for career visualisation. Implementing similar “future-casting” exercises in the classroom could help students identify the specific degrees, honours, and experiences they need to chase to reach their ultimate career goals.

Prioritising Logic Over Rote Learning
A recurring theme in the interview was the move away from “busy work” and rote memorisation. In an age where complex formulas can be solved by calculators in seconds, the panel suggests that the focus of STEM education should shift toward logical thinking and knowing how to find and apply information, rather than the manual execution of tasks that are automated in modern industry.